I’m grateful all the way down to my toes for the writers who read my work when it’s still bare and bumbling, for the writers who buoy me up when i’m ready to pack it in, for the writers who inspire me through their own work. (Ok, so sometimes I’m not so much inspired as shamed into carrying on, but who cares???!)

Back at it…

At our house, we don’t have to cook on Monday or Wednesday nights.
Those are Dinner Co-op nights, which means that at around 6 pm, the doorbell rings and — ta da — there’s dinner.
Hot, delicious and ready for the table.
(We return the favor on Thursday nights.)

I’m grateful for Dinner Co-op.
It cuts down on the weekly grocery bills.
it cuts down on the after dinner dishes.
And it cuts down, slightly, on the beans and tortillas we’re likely to consume in any given week. 

But more importantly, it says, in a really tangible way, that we are still tribal — even in 2010 — that we are still family — even if we’re technically not — and that it takes a village — even in a city. 

For all of that, I’m so grateful…

This weekend was just full of holiday stuff, for which I’m a total sucker.

Tonight, I’m grateful for holiday rituals and traditions:

The sing-along up at school, complete with nearly 500 luminarias, each one hand-cut by a chlld.

The funny little Charley Brown Christmas tree in our living room, bedecked with bells from my godmother, needlepoint stockings from my mom, decorated toilet paper rolls from the girls when they were small.

The stack of holiday picture books in my living room, from The Night Before Christmas to The Grinch, from Santa Knows to Stopping by Woods, from Polar Express to The World’s Number One Toy Expert.

The creche set that was my grandmother’s.

The Christmas music — from Johnny Cash to Johnny Clegg. Amahl and the Night Visitors. Jingle Bells. Joy to the World.

The cookies we rolled and cut and frosted and ate after dinner tonight.
Yum. 
And fun. 
I’m totally and completely grateful.

Some of the people I’m most grateful for in the whole world are my children’s teachers. 

Their pre-school teachers who plunged their hands into clay, muck and mud… who got down on the floor with them to build, hide and roll… who wrote down the funny and brilliant things that they said… who taught them to sing Happy Birthday in Spanish and say thank you in Hebrew and yell Yes! in Dutch.

Their elementary school teachers who taught them (and are teaching one still) to read… to work it out… to explore and experiment. Who have gotten to know them as people… who keep learning real, who keep it challenging, who keep it fun. Who have plans and who go with the flow, who are calm and smart and loving and thoughtful. Who let them use blocks and magnets and bubbles and salt clay and poster board and ipads and their brains and their imaginations.

The middle school teachers who challenge and support, who dare and inquire, who expect and appreciate. Who are teaching that the world is a big place with a lot of people whom we should know a lot about. Who are teaching that a school is a big place with a lot of people who should learn to live and work together. Who believe that learning should be wild and imaginative and intuitive and expansive and fun.

Their piano and violin teachers who have helped developed their ears and their fingers and their sensibilities, attuned now for beauty, for melody and harmony, for rhythm and resonance. 

Their coaches who have helped them stretch and strengthen and compete and cooperate and learn to live in and love their bodily selves.

Their babysitters who taught them how to hold their sleeves when slipping an arm into a jacket, their camp counselors who taught them to sing and to be brave, the women and men who’ve taught them how to paint and how to sew and how to play with improv, the ones who’ve taught them how to sit on the high back of a horse and be happy there… 

For all of these people I am grateful. 
My daughters are richer, safer, fuller, more knowledgeable, more inspired and more confident girls because of this wild web of people who’ve been in our lives.

All the children in the world need teachers.
Actually, all the people in the world need teachers — long past childhood.
Lucky are we to have so many, in all these hats and coats.
Grateful.

Mrs. Krikorian

BY SHARON OLDS

She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade,
a known criminal, the new teacher
asked me to stay after school the first day, she said
I’ve heard about you. She was a tall woman,
with a deep crevice between her breasts,
and a large, calm nose. She said,
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour’s work—
that hour’s work that took ten minutes
and then the devil glanced into the room
and found me empty, a house standing open—
you can go to the library. Every hour
I’d zip through the work in a dash and slip out of my
seat as if out of God’s side and sail
down to the library, solo through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass
and stroll over to the dictionary
to look up the most interesting word
I knew, spank, dipping two fingers
into the jar of library paste to
suck that tart mucilage as I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel’s
silks curling up like the fine steam of the body.

(Read the rest here…)

Yesterday I watched Suzan-Lori Parks work. 
The playwright sat at a table at the front of the room and she wrote.
For an hour.
On a red typewriter.

She had both water and coffee.
And some peppermints.
A few books.

Once, she stopped to check and send a text.
She took off her sweater.
She typed.

And so did I.
Because that was part of the "performance".
The audience was invited to do our own work. 
We spread out at desks and tables with journals and laptops and we wrote.

I was revising a picture book text.
A text I have written and revised and written and revised for many years now.
I can’t say the number because it horrifies me.
I have rejoiced over and cursed this text.
I have quit and restarted it.
I have had high hopes and no hope.

And yet, there I was yesterday, just working away on an ordinary Thursday, sippin’ coffee and hangin’ with Suzan-Lori Parks. I felt calm and, also, energized. I felt comforted to know that other people were working away, too, and occasionally sneaking a peppermint or a text to a friend. I felt bound to the timer at the end of the hour, knowing I wouldn’t quit before then — and wanting to work well afterwards.

So today I’m grateful for process.
I’m actually grateful that books don’t come out, all of piece, in our dreams. 
I’m grateful for the opportunity to revisit, to grow, to change.
I’m grateful for tables and timers, for new ideas and old stubborn ones.
I’m grateful for the examples of both inspiration and tenacity that remind me to sit down and open myself up to whatever comes out on the page today. 
I’m grateful.

Last night marked my last night of teaching for the semester.
And you know how it is this time of year.
I’m tempted to say, "I’m grateful for the academic calendar. For winter break. For fresh starts."
And that’d all be true, but it’s kind of tired-sounding.

The truth is, I’m also glad for the opportunity to teach. 
I’m grateful for my college and my classes and my students.
I’m grateful for the chance to share the work that I love with other people, to talk about and practice the craft with them, to witness both their glee and their struggles as they take to the page.

Each time I share a stack of library books with my students, I learn anew.
Each time I try to articulate how something can be done or why it might work, I learn anew.
Each time I critique a student’s story, I learn anew.

Teaching is good for me, as a writer and a person, and I’m grateful that I get the chance to do it.
And, yep, I’m grateful for winter break, too.

I am grateful for my running partners, without whom I would not be able to drag myself out of bed on cold, dark mornings and with whom I stretch, breathe, laugh, cry, sort out, burn off, ponder, pound and start my days off right. 

I am thankful for family dinners.

I am thankful that my grandparents — all four of them — held family dinners at their houses.
And that they passed them down, so that my mom and dad loved them and instituted them at our house, too.

(I almost said they "believed in them," but honestly, it was more deeply ingrained than that. it was just what was done.)

Not that I never resented being asked to come to the table and sit and make conversation and let the phone ring and ring and help clear and rinse and stack and all of that. I did. I was 13. And 14. And 15.

But mostly (and I swear this is not rose-colored glasses) I remember teasing and laughing and looking up words in the dictionary and events in the Encyclopedia. I remember telling long detailed stories about math class and the 3rd grade guinea pig. I remember running lines for the school play. I remember trying, for the first time, artichokes and fondue and gazpacho. I remember making placecards and coming up with wild new ways to fold napkins. I remember playing telephone and 20 questions and pig. 

And now, thank goodness, I have my own family who are more than happy to circle ’round every single night — whether we’re eating rice & beans or something more refined — to share tales from the trenches, to poke a little fun at one another, to try to understand everything from weather phenomena to Wikileaks. Sometimes it’s long and leisurely, other times someone nearly falls asleep at the table, or gets up to play piano or demonstrate a crazy playground move.

But regardless of context or even of content, the family dinner always serves as a centerpoint — a pulling in on the threads of a button so that it holds tight to the coat, a thing of both beauty and function, of comfort, of something we all can count on…

I have the sweetest floppiest limpiest funniest cuddliest oldest and most loyal dog in the world,
and I love her and am ever, ever, ever so grateful for her.
That is all. 

Today I felt grateful for so many things it’s hard to know where to start. 

I went for a run.

I spent time in an art supply store.

And a bookstore.

And I went out into the country with my husband and daughters and mother-in-law to cut a little Christmas tree.

The sun was so warm and bright and we had a picnic and the girls ran around in a maze and pet the goats and roasted marshmallows on the little log fire the farm folk keep stoked. It was so relaxed and easy and fun. 

And somehow there was still time this afternoon to read and nap and cook a really good meal and sit around the table and talk for a long, long time. Some days are like that.

And that’s what I’m grateful for.
The spaciousness of a single day.

So often we feel so constrained by the hours offered up — there aren’t enough of them, we say. We feel so rushed and harried and busy and still, at the end of it all, not enough got done and we get tired even thinking about tomorrow. So when a day like today comes along — so generously — I really notice. And feel grateful.

Happy Saturday, friends.
Namaste.